Cold Cases Revisited
by confusedsarcasm
Summary: Mysterious messages are being sent to Catherine at the lab. Could these be the clues she's been looking for to finally help her solve the murders of her best friend and exhusband? possible Grillows later
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Cold Cases Revisited  
**Summary**: Mysterious messages are being sent to Catherine at the lab. Could these be the clues she needs to finally help her solve the murders of her best friend and ex-husband?  
**Rating**: T  
**Pairings**: Probably going to be Grillows  
**A/N**: Um, if I confuse you with when exactly this would be taking place I'm sorry. For the purpose of this fic, everyone will be one team working together on the graveyard shift. And Lindsey is a teenager by now, or at least a pre-teen. And somehow Catherine has her own office. This is my first CSI fic, so reviews would be extremely helpful! I hope you enjoy it!

**Disclaimer**: I do not own CSI or any of its characters

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Catherine Willows sat in her office sorting though the enormous pile of mail on her desk. She tossed a couple of envelopes aside one after another until she suddenly stopped, a curious look adorning her face. In her hand she held one suspicious looking letter without a return address.

Catherine sat up straighter in her chair and examined the letter with intrigue as she flipped it over and unsealed it apprehensively. She turned it over and let the contents spill out onto the table in front of her before picking up the contents and starring at them mystified.

There were three photographs. One was of her best friend from when she was an exotic dancer; the other was of her ex-husband. She stared at Eddie and Stephanie's photos curiously and soon realized that she hadn't looked at the other picture. She picked it up and became even more confused when she found herself staring at a picture of …herself.

The crime scene investigator in her taking over, she turned it over to examine it more carefully in search for any clues as to what this was supposed to mean. There was only a single word scrawled on the back in a neat cursive script. She read it silently to herself. _'You'_

'_Well what is that supposed to mean?_' Catherine thought to herself. _'It _is_ a picture of me.'_

She decided to do the same to the other pictures and turned them over to find that they also had words scrawled on them as well, in the same neat cursive script as the other.

They contained the words _'are'_ and _'next'_. She quickly combined the individual words together in her head. The message was clear. _'You are next.'_

A sudden knock at her door startled her out of her thoughts and she hastily shoved the pictures back into the envelope and put it safely in the top right drawer of her desk.

"Come in!" she called to whoever was at the other end of the door. The door opened and Catherine smiled up at Nick. "Hey!" she greeted.

"Hey!" replied Nick in response, "Grissom's handing out assignments," he said, gesturing towards the break room with his left hand.

"Okay, I'll be right there." Catherine watched Nick shut the door behind him as he headed towards the break room. She looked down at the drawer which contained the mysterious message and sighed. _'Well, time to get to work.'_ she told herself and headed after Nick down the corridors of the lab, pushing all thoughts related to the past five minutes out of her head.

----

She had tried to focus all of her attention on the evidence laid out neatly in front of her on the long table, but she was having difficulty concentrating on anything but that message. At the crime scene she had collected evidence without thought, taking photographs of anything and everything. She wasn't paying attention to the little things around her like she usually did. The little things that could break a case. Thinking about it now, she didn't even remember what the house had even looked like. Luckily she was working with Sara, so she didn't have to worry about _her_ missing anything.

'_Speak of the devil,' _thought Catherine, as Sara strode into the room.

"Anything interesting?" asked Sara, looking along the length of the table at the evidence.

Catherine didn't know how to respond to that. She had been in that room for almost twenty minutes, yet she hadn't even begun to analyze the evidence right in front of her face. "Uh, not yet…" she took her gloves off with a snap. "I'm gonna go get some coffee." Sara responded with only a nod of her head and something that resembled an 'uh huh', her head never lifting up from the evidence on the table.

----

Catherine flopped down on the couch in the break room and rested her head against the back of the coach, exhausted. She caught sight of the clock on the wall and read the time. Her shift ended in five minutes. She decided that she wasn't going to get anything productive done in the next five minutes and paged Sara to tell her that she was headed home.

She made it to the front doors, but was stopped by the calling of her name from someone at the reception area. She walked up to the counter.

"This came for you." said the lady cheerily as she handed Catherine an envelope without a return address.

Catherine's eyes widened, "Who gave this to you?" she asked.

The lady shrugged her shoulders slightly. "I don't know. It was just here when I came back from my lunch break."

Catherine didn't respond and pocketed the envelope. She would open it when she got home.

----

Catherine closed and locked the door to her home before sitting down on her living room sofa. She leaned over her coffee table and opened the envelope, once again watching as the contents spilled out in front of her. This time there were no pictures. Only a necklace.

She picked it up hesitantly and held it in her palm as she examined it closely. After she had memorized the emblem hanging off of the silver chain she put it back in its envelope. She had never seen that symbol before and it didn't bring any memories back to her. _'So what does it mean?'_ she thought desperately as she stood up and decided to go to bed before she passed out from exhaustion.

----

The shrill ringing of her phone awoke her and she reached blindly for it in the darkness of her room.

"Willows." she answered a bit groggily.

It was Grissom. He needed her at a crime scene.

"I'm already on a case." she informed him. He told her that it was taken care of and he had gotten Warrick to work the case with Sara. Catherine was about to protest, but before she could, he explained that there was an exponential amount of blood spatter and he needed her there to work it with him. She agreed and hung up the phone, shoving her face back into the softness of her pillow before forcing herself to get up.

----

Catherine pulled up to the crime scene fifteen minutes late. Grissom had woken her up pretty early compared to when she usually woke up. Even if working the graveyard shift meant that she woke up around the same time some people went to bed. So early in fact, that she had time to see her daughter off to school, something she hadn't been able to do in a long time.

Her daughter had missed the bus that morning and she had to drive Lindsey to school herself, which just so happened to be inconveniently located in the opposite direction of the crime scene. While that should have been something to be glad for, instead she would have preferred on this particular day to have someone commit murder a little closer to the school. At least until Lindsey could get her license.

She pulled up about a block away from the crime scene and got out of the car. She made her way instinctively over to the rear of the car and opened up the back to retrieve her kit. After grabbing that, she shut the door and made sure everything was locked before making her was hurriedly over to the yellow crime tape. As she neared the crime scene, she took in everything around her. The buildings were tall and close together, definitely a place you wouldn't want to be walking around in at night, especially with the lack of street lights. She ducked under the crime tape and entered into an alley. It was so narrow she could barely make out the figure of the corpse on the ground beside Grissom.

Grissom tuned around slowly upon hearing Catherine's familiar footsteps and went back to observing the body. Catherine was surprised when Grissom didn't comment on her tardiness, but instead kneeled down beside the body. "She's been here a while." commented Grissom.

Catherine took a step closer to get a better look and grimaced at the smell. Not only was the body sprawled out in front of an overflowing dumpster, but there were flies and other bugs crawling all over the body, in and out of the various lacerations and cuts running up and down the entire length of her body.

He was right about the blood spatter. Almost the entire length of the alley walls were covered in blood. Different forms of spatter and blood drops were on the ground all around them. As Grissom collected one of the bugs and placed it gently in a jar, Catherine took an even closer look at the body. She examined the body with here eyes, starting from her feet and working her way up. She had no shoes on, and judging by the skin, or lack there of on the bottom of her feet she had been running away from something or someone for quite a long ways. Her legs seemed almost dislocated, but they would have to wait to see what damage was actually done to this person in the coroner's report. She glanced over the upper body quickly, which seemed to be okay, as far as a dead body's torso could be, and gazed at something around the victim's neck.

It was the same necklace she had been sent the night before.

Catherine froze and stood up abruptly. Her unexpected movement caught Grissom's attention and he tilted his head up to look at her. "What's wrong?" asked Grissom. Catherine said nothing as her breathing became irregular and she took a couple of uncontrolled steps backwards. The look of dread on her face was something Grissom had never seen on her before and he got up to stand next to her. Before he could do anything to calm her down, Catherine turned around and left the alley hurriedly. Grissom went after her and found her leaning on a wall just around the corner. "Are you okay?" asked Grissom as he put his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. Catherine looked up from the ground to look him into his eyes.

"Yeah," she replied unconvincingly, "Everything's fine."

Grissom had never seen Catherine react this way at a crime scene before. Even when she first started, and it made him feel a little uneasy. "How about I collect the rest of the evidence and meet you back at the Lab," reasoned Grissom. "I'm almost done anyway." Catherine simply nodded her head and walked slowly back to the Denali. Grissom watched her for a while and then turned back towards the crime scene to finish the job on his own.

Catherine made it to the car and went to open the door when she felt a cold hand come up and cover her mouth. She jumped in surprise and elbowed her attacker in the head, putting all her weight into it. He faltered back slightly before lunging at her full force, knocking her against the Denali, and before she knew it a soft cloth was being pressed tightly against her nose and mouth. She had no time to react as her body relaxed and her world turned black.

----

A/N: Okay! So what do you think? Good? Bad? It's been awhile since I've even read a fic for CSI, so I'm a little rusty when it comes to this show, but I still love it. Keep me motivated and leave a review. Anonymous reviews enabled as well!


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N**: Sorry I took so long to update…but I haven't given up on this fic, so let me know how it is. Please read, review, and enjoy!  
**Disclaimer**: I do not own CSI or any of its characters.

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Grissom stood up slowly and came to stand at his full height with a sigh of relief. He had been squatting near that woman's body for quite some time now and it definitely wasn't _not_ taking a toll on his knees. Cradling the evidence he had just recently collected in his arms almost protectively, he made his way back to the Denali to prepare and head back to the lab to process the mounds of evidence he held in his arms.

He made it to the rear of the vehicle and opened the back of it before inserting his evidence and kit into the trunk. He shut the door and made a move to enter the drivers' side of the Denali but stopped suddenly. His brow furrowed in confusion as he noticed that Catherine's Denali was still parked a few meters away from his own. Making his way cautiously over to it he peered inside. Upon not seeing any signs of Catherine he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Catherine's cell-phone number by memory. With each unanswered ring his heart rate sped up dramatically. He rushed into his Denali and shut the door, locking it in the process and dialed Catherine's house number this time.

Even if Catherine wasn't home he suspected that either her mother or daughter would be there to pick up. But they weren't.

The answering machine picked up and Grissom debated whether or not to leave a message or try and call the lab to see if someone had come to pick her up instead. But before he could end the call he was stopped again. This time by a sinister sounding male voice—definitely not Catherine's.

"_The number you are trying to reach has been…"_ A menacing laugh filtered down the phone line and into Grissom's ear heavily, making his heart rate go from dangerously fast to almost stopping. The message continued after the short burst of malevolent laughter, _"disconnected or is no longer available…please try calling again later." _ The standard message held an entirely different meaning when being said with such an ominous voice and Grissom now had the phone gripped so tightly in his hand that he could have easily broken it. The message wasn't done though, _"But don't wait too long," _the voice went from a mock-cheery tone to one of complete seriousness and possibly even hatred,_ "because you might be too late."_

The message cut of abruptly and a beep followed soon after, prompting Grissom to leave a message. He slammed his phone shut and had to restrain himself with every fiber of his being not to throw his cell phone out the window in anger and frustration. Turning the key in the ignition, the Denali roared to life and Grissom put it into drive as he drove as fast as he ever had towards the crime lab.

----

Her head was pounding as if she had just attended a rock concert right next to the speaker system, then gone home and gotten drunk, fell down a flight of stairs, and hit across the head with a baseball bat.

She opened her eyes and it suddenly all came flooding back to her. The crime scene, the messages, the struggle just meters away from the crime scene. The memories all came crashing down on her at once like a sudden downpour of rain in Nevada as she scanned the area in front of her. She wasn't in some type of abandoned ware-house as she would have expected, but instead she was being kept conveniently in someone's basement as if she were just another piece of old furniture that someone didn't want anymore and had been relocated from the living room to the basement, never again to see the light of day.

Her head throbbed again painfully and her hand instinctively sought to reach out to it, but wasn't able to. She moved her hands again and realized that they were bound together and behind her back by some sort of rope or cord. She was sitting in an old wooden rocking chair and she stood up abruptly. Surprisingly, she found that she wasn't bound to the chair in anyway. Her hands were unavailable for movement, but she was free to wander around at her will, which she did.

Her movements were uneven at first—she must've been out for quite a while, meaning she must now be somewhere far away from the last crime scene where she had been abducted. But she eventually regained her footing and moved around the confines of the basement easily, scanning anything and everything, looking for any possible way out.

After about five minutes of intense searching, she realized with a distressing feeling that there was no way out. There was only one door at the top of a small flight of cement stairs that was locked and only one small window at the top of the room that let the smallest amount of light seep in just enough for her to see clearly only about thirty percent of the small room.

Fear finally setting in Catherine ran up the stairs and threw all of her weight on the door, desperate for an escape. She hit the door repeatedly with her shoulder, but to no avail. The door wasn't going anywhere. Catherine retreated down the stairs dejectedly and sat down in the same rocking chair she had awoken in and thought not of her situation, but her family.

Her thoughts were on Lindsey and how she would or wouldn't deal without her mother in her life when she door she had been attempting to open swung open slowly, letting a small amount of light filter into the room in the process.

Catherine's heart rate picked up and she could practically feel it pounding against her chest as she waited for the person on the other end of the door to reveal themselves and find out what this was all about.

----

"Gil!" Captain Jim Brass met Grissom at the door of the crime lab after receiving the dreadful news of Catherine's abduction via cell phone. "What the hell happened?" he asked desperately.

Grissom didn't stop walking at his frantic pace until he reached the break room where he met up with his team. They were all pacing nervously, having also head of Catherine's situation from Brass. Now that everyone was present and in the same room, Grissom started his explanation, "We were at the crime scene ten miles south of the Rampart when something…startled Catherine."

"What was it?" inquired Nick curiously.

"I'm not sure." replied Grissom solemnly, "but she just took off and I told her I would finish up processing the scene alone and she left." explained Grissom, "…or at least I thought she did." he added softly.

Warrick's jaw clenched in anger of Catherine's abduction and possibly even at the fact that Grissom hadn't made sure that Catherine had gotten into her car safely. But he couldn't blame Grissom for what happened. It wasn't his fault, and it sure wouldn't help the matter any.

"What the hell is going on here?" a new voice entered the break room and everyone turned towards it. Ecklie stood in the doorway with a stern expression adorning his face. He held up a rather large manila envelope in his right hand and entered the room, dropping the envelope onto the table where everyone gathered around it curiously. "This was dropped off without a return address and directed to a Gil Grissom." Ecklie explained, "But that's not the interesting part," he began, "it's what's inside."

"You opened my mail?" asked Grissom incredulously, "what gives you the right to invade—"

"This is my lab, Gil; anything you receive here is work related and therefore _my_ business, especially suspicious looking unmarked content." he said.

Grissom ignored him, his mind more occupied with finding Catherine as he reached out to the envelope, gripping the edges as little as possible to avoid contamination of any possible trace they could collect from this envelope later, and turned it over.

Everyone watched in silence as the contents spilled out onto the table. Everyone's breath caught in their throat as they looked at the contents. "Oh my god…"

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A/N: It'll get more exciting later. Please review and keep me motivated so I review faster!


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